Put very simply, it makes a plot. Time on the horizontal axis, voltage on the vertical axis. You can use it for anything you can think of involving plotting things with respect to time. (Most can also do a second voltage on the horizontal axis instead of time.)
So, sure, you can use it to find out whether data is being transferred, but that's a very simplistic use. It is very much a general-purpose circuit debugging tool, any time you want to see what the voltage somewhere is doing.
An analog oscilloscope is truly an "oscillo-scope" - "wave viewer", in that it shows repeating waves by synchronizing the plot to retrace the same one over and over. Digital scopes (and a select few analog ones) have the capability to store one plot in memory, so they don't need to retrace to keep it visible. Therefore you can view
any plot.
Next time you register on a forum with that nick, can you do it in a smaller font?